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OTTAWA — Abolishing the scandal-plagued Senate would cost taxpayers $10-$30 million in golden parachute payoffs, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation said Monday.

The CTF said the severance payments for $135,200-a-year senators would likely be limited by legislation or regulation, and wouldn’t approach the massive amount discussed by some senators in 1992 — the last time Canada seriously considered getting rid of the current Senate.

Marjory LeBreton, the Conservative government leader in the Senate, raised the possibility Sunday of killing the upper chamber, which will cost Canadians $91.5 million this year to operate.

“We have got to fix this, once and for all,” LeBreton said Sunday on one of several television interviews. “Otherwise ... the Senate as an institution cannot survive.”

If the Harper government followed a 1992 formula advocated by one senator at the time, giving senators pink slips would cost taxpayers a staggering $172.4 million until the youngest of them retired, according to CTF estimates provided exclusively to The Vancouver Sun and Postmedia News.

That formula involved paying senators their full salaries until their retirement age of 75. There are currently 102 senators and three vacancies.

Under this most lucrative scenario, young members such as B.C.’s publicity-shy Conservative Yonah Martin, 48, would stand to gain a windfall without having to fly again to Ottawa. She’d get an inflation-adjusted total of $4.8 million from now until age 75.

That payoff, however, would pale in comparison to the gains for Quebec’s Patrick Brazeau, Canada’s youngest senator at 38, who is due to earn $7.3 million from now until retirement after taking inflation into account.

But CTF federal director Gregory Thomas said the government would incur the wrath of Canadians if it didn’t bring forward — by regulation or legislation — a system to limit payoffs to between six months and two years worth of salary, with a few exceptions.

“Canadians are fed up with this bordello of back-scratching and entitlement.”

He said any senator going to court demanding a continuation of their current paycheque until age 75 would likely be out of luck — even though there are examples of this approach in Canadian history.

“Severance pay ranging from six to eighteen months, depending on age and length of service, would probably meet any court challenge an aggrieved senator could mount,” Thomas said Monday.

“So the severance damage could probably be confined to a range of between $10 million and $30 million.”

Martin would likely be due a severance payout of 12 to 24 months of salary, he said.

Given how many years she could expect to serve, Thomas said she might be able to argue for at least two years of salary.

The Vancouver Sun contacted a number of lawyers with experience in labour, employment and human rights law. All declined to comment, saying it is a relatively untested area given that senators are appointed and therefore are not considered employees of the government.

In 1992, the late Liberal senator Philippe Gigantes speculated on an expected huge payoff if the Charlottetown accord to amend the constitution was passed.

That agreement, shot down later that year in a national referendum, called for the replacement of the current Senate with a smaller elected chamber with each province having the same number of seats.

“What they’ll probably do is pay our salaries till age 75, but not the allowances,” said Gigantes, speaking at a time when senators earned a $64,400 base salary.

A 1991 Library of Parliament study, which was commissioned by an unidentified parliamentarian and never published, indicated there were some Canadian precedents for such a payoff.

In 1968, when the Quebec government abolished its upper chamber, it gave outgoing members $10,000-a-year annuities that were equal to their annual salaries at the time.

Nova Scotia did the same in the 1920s, while Manitoba offered members equally lucrative government jobs in 1876. (B.C. never had an upper chamber, though the colony of Vancouver Island did have one before B.C. joined Canada in 1871.)

However, when New Zealand shut down its unpopular upper chamber in 1951, a bill was passed stating that members would get nothing other than an opportunity to go cap-in-hand to a public inquiry to prove they needed financial help.

B.C.’s five senators were cool to the notion of publicly discussing the issue Monday, with only Liberal Mobina Jaffer returning a telephone call. She said senators could expect a significant severance, though she wouldn’t speculate on how much.

Here’s how B.C.’s five senators (a sixth seat is vacant following Conservative Gerry St. Germain’s retirement last autumn) stack up. The estimated payout is the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s estimate of the severance each senator could expect, based on factors including age and years of service. (Numbers are rounded)

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Abolishing plum Senate posts could cost an estimated $10-$30 million

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